Any Improvements to Siri Apple Watch Face

[GC251114]

When this first came out I liked & used as my everyday watch Face. The novelty soon wore off though & I was left thinking that this was yet another trick missed by Apple.

I remember the whoops & wows at the Keynote, but surely Apple could make this more appealing & worthwhile.

Has this improved at all since made available , or is just typical Apple at the moment & same old same old ?

I’ve checked but can see no additional improvements or ability of allowing 3rd party apps to take advantage of.

Am I missing something , or do we really need to come back in 6 months to see if any improvements?

Cheers

 

[gameboy213]

Nothing at all has changed with it. I actually like the idea but the way it is now I never ever use that face. Too bad.

 

[GC251114]

Nothing at all has changed with it. I actually like the idea but the way it is now I never ever use that face. Too bad.

Exactly.

In its current state it becomes totally forgettable.

Cheers

 

[Kognito]

Nothing at all has changed with it. I actually like the idea but the way it is now I never ever use that face. Too bad.

What did you replace it with? I moved from the modular face fairly recently to the Siri face and have found it quite useful in that it shows what I'm likely to want to see. I do wish it was more customisable though.

 

[sean000]

You know I was initially not that impressed with the Siri face, but I find myself going back to it all the time. It's not the prettiest or the coolest face on my watch, but it does seem to have a knack for displaying useful information... at least on days when I have a lot of appointments or meetings. Yes, there are plenty of faces that have long complications that can display the time and location of your next appointment, but the Siri face displays the most detail about appointments and it usually shows you what's up after that as well (or you can simply scroll to see all of your events for that day). I think the Siri face really shines when you have a day of many appointments, or when you are traveling by plane. It's pretty cool to land at an airport and as soon as you turn on data again you see the Siri face display the flight number, gate, and boarding time of your next flight.

On slower days Siri can be kind of random. I like that it will show a breaking news headline or a photo from my collection, but it keeps the same headline and photo for many hours instead of rotating. I also wish that I could use third party apps as data sources. Once that becomes an option I could see Siri being even more useful, but that could also lead to it being even more random and less useful. I find myself using it on my busy meeting days, and then switching back to a nicer looking face for other days. I tend to use high information faces during the day (modular, utility, simple, color, siri) and lower information faces on nights and weekends (photos, motion, x-large, numerals, kaleidoscope, etc.). I've never been too sure where the Activity face fits. It's cool to look at as I put more steps in throughout my day, but I kind of got bored with it after awhile.

I keep going back to the Siri face though. It does a nice job of displaying the two things I'm usually looking at my watch to keep track of: Appointments and weather. I usually have the Activity rings displayed on this face as well: So it's Time, day of the week + date, Activity rings, and the Siri feed.

 

[twinlight]

I wish it gets upgraded with notifications like ”Your Airpods case was at 20% battery when last used (23 min ago)” and that 3rd party apps can use it.

 

[gameboy213]

What did you replace it with? I moved from the modular face fairly recently to the Siri face and have found it quite useful in that it shows what I'm likely to want to see. I do wish it was more customisable though.

Honestly I use modular and utility a ton. I just wish the Siri face allowed third party access. Could be wonderful if it would.

 

[sean000]

Honestly I use modular and utility a ton. I just wish the Siri face allowed third party access. Could be wonderful if it would.

Third party app access does seem to be the factor that many people say would finally make the Siri face truly useful. I wonder if it's a technical issue or a legal one? Or both? Of course adding more sources to the Siri face will mean the Siri face is polling more apps for updates or useful information. That could mean more battery usage. It also means more logic is necessary to decide what to show if there are too many options. Apple could avoid too much trouble by limiting the number of sources you can select. I think you can currently select 14? At least that's how many options I have. Maybe limit it like the number of docked apps are limited?

The third party app source might also be a legal issue. The Apple legal team is probably debating over what types of content can be displayed. What if a third party app starts pushing ads to the Siri watch face? Apple wouldn't want one of their watch faces to become yet another vehicle for advertising, so it might be a matter of it just taking time for Apple to decide on the third party app provider terms of service.

Or it could just be Apple being Apple. Why give third parties access to Siri when they won't even allow third party watch faces? Because Apple likes to maintain a certain amount of control and consistency.

 

[Kognito]

Or it could just be Apple being Apple. Why give third parties access to Siri when they won't even allow third party watch faces? Because Apple likes to maintain a certain amount of control and consistency.

I think it's this more than anything. They'd want control over how the integration happened so that users didn't end up getting rubbish pushed to their Watch face, potentially ruining the 'apple' experience. I'd hope they do allow integration, even if it was just in a basic notification format where apps could push a title, icon and text.

 

[BarracksSi]

I think it's this more than anything. They'd want control over how the integration happened so that users didn't end up getting rubbish pushed to their Watch face, potentially ruining the 'apple' experience. I'd hope they do allow integration, even if it was just in a basic notification format where apps could push a title, icon and text.

I'll agree, too. What Apple often does is restrict third-party access to some feature until Apple themselves get it working reliably and able to handle as many edge cases as they can find during real-world usage.

I'll just guess that the Siri watch face is in the same boat for now.

(speaking of which -- I never used it because I don't use my gadgets for work appointments. But I checked it out the other day and it happened to display a Memory from Photos, which contained a handful of pics from when my wife and I went to visit her hometown a few years back. Kind of a pleasant surprise, actually.)